Final Five
by Hawki
Summary: Fate was uncaring of the misery it thrust upon human and cylon alike, cursed to repeat the cycle of creation and destruction. And having experienced more than one cycle, having experienced life as members of both peoples, the Final Five were no exception.
1. Ellen Tigh

_A/N_

_The idea for this came from a writing challenge, namely to "write five things that make a character smile." However, the original challenge was pairing based, and while _Battlestar Galactica _has plenty of opportunities for that (sometimes a bit too many IMO...0_0), I decided to alter things. To not make it pairing based, and instead of happy romance, make it a case where characters are smiling, yet keep up a healthy level of depression in each case, as per each member of the Five. Yep, that's how my mind works. ;)_

* * *

**Battlestar Galactica: Final Five**

**The First: Ellen Tigh**

**01**

Ellen Tigh smiles at the notion of Saul's retirement.

She knows that Bill wouldn't believe her when she exclaims how much she's looking forward to spending more time with her husband-all her time, if she can wrangle it. But that bothers her little, and not only because Saul's friend is currently taking a leak in the toilets of this strip bar in Caprica City. Full time marriage, whether it be in a house or homeless on a street. It's only fitting that she lets Saul go out with a bang, to be in a room full of scantily clad women before entering a life where the only naked woman he sees will be herself.

And she believes it. His honesty. His sincerity. Much like her own, their feelings coursing through them as they enjoy this night of celebration. And so she smiles at what she has. She smiles at what's to come.

It's only when Saul turns her back on her, when he chooses Bill over her, that she stops smiling.

And tries to regain it elsewhere.

**02**

Ellen smiles at the strange man that's come up to her in the _Pink Moon_.

Alright, so maybe he's not that strange. Over the years, over her efforts of sticking it to Saul every time she gets for abandoning her, she's got to know many types of men. Usually only on the physical level, but some of them will actually use some foreplay or engage in pillow talk. And whilst she has no intention of getting to know this "mysterious stranger" in such a manner, even if he is that type of man, she's willing to engage in vocal conversation. For once. Anything to rub it in to Saul further.

And, it seems, to rub it into this...priest? as well. No, she won't change, she doesn't _want _t to change and if she _does_ change, she's only selling herself out. She is who she is and she's willing to live with that. And neither Saul nor this mystery man is going to change her.

So Ellen smiles as she verbally spars with him. She smiles as she holds her ground in this battle of tongues in a manner she's not accustomed to.

It's only when the shockwave of a nuclear detonation hits the bar that she stops smiling.

**03**

Ellen smiles at her husband when they're reunited.

She never thought she'd be so grateful to be on one of the starships that kept Saul away from her all these years. But then again, she never thought the Twelve Colonies would be subjected to a nuclear holocaust. She never thought that a mysterious benefactor would get her on the _Rising Star_. And she certainly never thought that she'd be reunited with Saul in such a manner, and be so..._grateful _to see him. It's like...like the years of them drifting apart never happened. And with civilization having been reduced to ground zero, with the human race forced to start over, maybe it's effectively the case that none of the events of the past occurred.

Yet old habits are hard to break. That's why she smiles at Bill and Lee at the dinner table celebrating her return. Why she smiles when Tom Zarek talks to her on _Cloud Nine_, wanting to know about someone called Valence. That's why she continues to spend much of her time in the starship's bar, nearly getting killed by some radicals as a result. She's been poking Saul in the eye for so long, it's as if it's all she knows.

Yet she still smiles. Because maybe people can change, just like the mystery man said...or Mister Cylon as he's revealed to be shortly before the fleet's arrival at the world of New Caprica. Maybe she can change as well...change the entire dynamic of her relationship with Saul. And maybe New Caprica is the place to do it.

So Ellen smiles when the two head planetside. She smiles in the presence of her husband, even as the months of cylon occupation take their toll on the colony and on herself as she's forced to give into "Brother" Cavil's wishes to keep her husband out of detention and prevent him from losing his other eye. It's in this feat, even if it requires giving data to the cylons, that she's successful.

It's a success that isn't repeated when it comes to the punishment for her crimes.

**04**

Ellen finds herself smiling at John.

It's funny, really. She didn't die with a smile on her lips, nor did she wake up with one. It's only when she sees the man (yes, he's still a man in her eyes) approach her that the smile returns to her. The man that she and her fellow scientists made in the image of her father. The man who would become the first of eight cylon models that she, Saul and the others crafted. The man who condemned Daniel, his creators and humanity to death, not to mention nearly driving her to death with his fraking on New Caprica. And yet, after all this time, she's glad to see him.

Sort of.

The smile becomes bittersweet as he accuses her of not learning anything, of not changing. If change leads to what "Number One" has become, maybe it's better not to change at all, as she once told him on Picon. In one sense, she's come home, reunited with her 'children.' But on the other hand...the hand that shows how her children have refused to grow at all, she knows that the Colony no longer is her home. And under her first child's leadership, it never will be.

So despite being a cylon, despite being among her own kind, it isn't until Ellen is returned to humanity that she feels at home. Or rather, when she's with Saul again. Or at least that seems like the case until it's revealed he's impregnated one of their own 'children.'

And while the fact that two cylons have successfully produced a child is a biological miracle, Ellen doesn't find herself smiling.

**05**

She's with Saul on Earth...and she's home.

Not the home that was the Colony. Not the home that was the Twelve Colonies. Not even her original home of Earth-the real Earth, the one that even two-thousand years after she left it, is still an irradiated wasteland. No, she's on the new Earth that the old Earth once was...what Kobol was...heck, even what the Twelve Colonies were. And yet it's something else. Something new. Something...innocent. Something that she hopes will stop the cycle of destruction from ever repeating itself.

And if it does...well, she won't be around to see it anyway.

Ellen sees much right now, looking across the savannah of the continent that the remnants of humanity and cylon have called home. But she only _truly _sees Saul, standing beside her. Together with her for the rest of their lives, as was once the apparent case on a sleazy bar in Caprica City all those years ago. Yet now, on this new world, she knows that this will indeed be the case.

So Ellen smiles as she and Saul enter their first embrace on this world.

It's all she needs.


	2. Samuel Anders

**Battlestar Galactica: Final Five**

**The Second: Samuel Anders**

**01**

Samuel Anders smiles as he scores another goal.

It's to be expected really. Pyramid is a fun game..._the _game of the Twelve Colonies as far as the star player of the Caprica Buccaneers is concerned. But it's so much more...it's mathematical precision and its application combined with physical activity. The court of the game, each angle to specification, each rebound conforming to the laws of motion, velocity and friction. It's simply art. And whilst his teammates understand the gist of it, they do not _understand _it. They see no need to. Which, as high altitude training in the mountains near Delphi demonstrates, means that Sam has an edge.

Even so, he's not infallible. That's why his coach is able to score a goal against him, Sam smiling as he does so. He smiles as he lies down on the ground. He smiles right up to the point where a blinding flash tears through the sky, heralding the appearance of a mushroom cloud in the distance...one among many. A flash that heralds words that he does not even hear himself speak.

"This has happened before..."

Sam isn't smiling, thanks to the appearance of those clouds. But that's not the only reason...

**02**

Sam smiles after nearly being killed by a fellow human and nearly killing her in turn.

It's ridiculous really. The glorious "Caprica Resistance," opening fire on two "cylons" out in the open in broad daylight and not hitting them despite laying on a storm of gunfire. And what makes it even more ridiculous is that they turn out not to be cylons, but rather Viper pilots from a warship called _Galactica_. As one of them says, a Kara "Starbuck" Thrace as he learns later says, they suck. And right now, Sam can't disagree with her.

Yet he still smiles. He's even still smiling after Kara gives him a run for his cubits on their base's pyramid court. Not only is she a better shot than him, but she's almost as good, if not _as _good at pyramid as well. For someone who's leading what could be the only human survivors on Caprica against the cylon occupation, it doesn't do much for his pride. Yet he still smiles...Smiles because of the absurdity of it all, and that within a few days of meeting each other, he and Kara are getting to know each other in a much more...physical way.

It's ridiculous, but as he's learnt over time, as he continues to learn, nearly dying together can be a pretty bonding experience. Even if that bond is broken when Kara and her two fellow pilots (one a cylon no less) return to _Galactica _with the vague promise of coming back to rescue the C-Bucks. A promise that isn't fulfilled for a whole nine months. Yet when it is fulfilled, when his bond is reforged, when he sees Kara clad head to toe in body armour...

Sam can't help but smile.

**03**

Sam smiles the day he gets married.

Alright, maybe some of that has to do with smiling like an idiot yesterday as well. Baltar's groundbreaking ceremony, while ranging from the uplifting to the sanctimonious, still provided some pretty good booze and music. Combine the two together and Sam finds himself asleep under one of the tables, never mind the single digit temperature. So, he smiled a lot yesterday, drank a lot and the first thing he sees when he wakes up is Kara asking him to marry her.

In those kind of circumstances...what else could a man say?

Sam smiles as he gives his second affirmation today, "I do" being a bit more forceful than "um...okay." He smiles all the way from the riverbank to the settlement that will become New Caprica City. He smiles not because of the booze from yesterday, but because he's genuinely happy. It's not until he sees a shocked Lee that his smile falters. And coupled with what that backstabbing bastard/future friend will do, what the cylons and that frakwit Leoben will do, with what humanity will do to itself on this world in the not too distant future, of what Kara will do to him after he went through hell to rescue her...

Sam soon finds himself losing reasons to smile.

**04**

Two weeks after his wife's death, Sam is still smiling.

He has no reason to smile bar being able to call heads every time he flips a cubit while standing on top of a Viper. He has no reason to pursue a faux relationship with Seelix, let alone the praise he gives her every time she makes a successful shot through the pyramid hoop that even a moron could make. Right now, he finds himself without reason to do anything. Just smile like the idiot he is, to go from everything from flipping cubits to frakking Tory Foster. He smiles because without Kara around, he fears that deep down, he'll never be able to smile again.

Of course, as the music plays...as his existence as a cylon is revealed...that becomes a moot point.

And not even Kara's return can change that.

**05**

He's a dead man. A _thing_. A freak of cylon technology. And Sam isn't smiling because quite simply, he isn't capable of it anymore.

He stares into that which lies between life and death onboard _Galactica_, knowing that he will have soon entirely departed from the realm of the former and embraced the unknown of the latter. He has his mission-guide the fleet into the sun and allow humanity to begin anew on their new home. He has his orders, and will follow them. Not even Kara, whose presence he can barely sense, can dissuade him.

Not that she tries to. Instead, she returns that which are hers, but were once his-her dog tags, given to him on that fateful day on Caprica, when she promised to return for him. Yet now there will be no return, no reunification, and she knows it. So she kisses him for the last time and says what they both know...what they've always known, even if at times, they couldn't see it. And thus she leaves...for Earth...and whatever awaits her beyond. She doesn't hear what Sam says, but she doesn't need to. She'll understand soon enough. Understand like Sam does in his last few minutes. Understand the meaning of his words.

"I'll see you on the other side..."

And Samuel Anders smiles.


	3. Galen Tyrol

**Battlestar Galactica: Final Five**

**The Third: Galen Tyrol**

**01**

Galen Tyrol is smiling.

He's not sure why really. Is it because he can't get _All Along the Watchtower _out of his head? Is it from Tory's insistence that she can't, smiling at him in turn each time she does? Is it that they and the three others of their group are close to giving back resurrection technology to the inhabitants of Earth? Or is it that after all the...visions have told him, of the coming apocalypse...that he smiles because it's the only thing that's keeping their warnings off his mind?

Galen doesn't know. A chip in his head, a sign of stress, cold feet about his plans to marry...any of those are preferable to the idea that the Thirteenth Tribe will soon face an uprising by its own mechanical creations. And since there's no sign of that as far as he can tell, especially not at this marketplace...well, he's a scientist, but he supposes ignorance is bliss. Especially when he smiles to himself as he goes over the lines of his song.

_But you and I, we've been through that. And this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late._

And it's only then as the uprising begins, as Galen is vaporized along with his grin in the inferno of nuclear fire, that he realizes how late the hour truly is.

**02**

Galen smiles the first time he sees the nugget walking across the hanger deck.

He can't help it really-this is the _fifth _time that Lieutenant Sharon Valerii has missed the trap and put holes in the deck. He should be mad, really-it's his deck and as such, it's his job to clear up the mess when they frak things up. With any luck, the captain and colonel will boot her off the ship...

Or not. Which makes Galen smile again as not only as Valerii, or "Sharon" (yes, he's on a first name basis right now) not been booted off the ship, but she's proven to be a valuable asset, both on the professional and...personal level. Certainly it leads to a lot of smiles and smirks, both between the NCO and his deck crew and between him and Sharon herself. They smile a lot more when they begin planning their future together...to muster out, to settle down on Picon, maybe even have children...they even smile when all possibility of such a thing goes up in smoke along with the rest of human civilization. Because right now, all they have is each other.

And that remains true, even as the smiles strain. Remains true even as Sharon begins acting strangely. Remains true even as Galen breaks it off, not wanting to continue the thing that put Socinus in the brig for the kid's attempts to cover for him breaking protocol. It continues in some form even when Sharon is revealed for what she really is. Because while Galen isn't in the mood for listening to Gaius Baltar's pearls of wisdom, the doctor's still right-it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

But as Sharon is shot by Cally, as she lies dying in his arms, as she says that she still loves him...Galen feels like he'll never be able to smile again.

**03**

Galen smiles on New Caprica.

Despite the poor weather, despite the slow progress on infrastructure, despite the fact that Baltar isn't responding to any of the demands of the Colonial Workers Alliance, the leader of the union still finds reason to smile. All in all, he's found quite a few reasons to do so, ironically when a physical assault on his part temporarily prevented his current wife from forming such a movement with her mouth, or any other kind.

Galen smiled when Cally recovered her ability to smile back at him. He smiles when they are joined in matrimony, and when the next step of human relations is taken. He smiles when Admiral Adama grants his request to be allowed to live on New Caprica, to give birth to Nicholas Stephen Tyrol. He alone, growing up on a world where humanity has found sanctuary from their cylon pursuers, elicits many smiles on Galen's part by itself. Even if the weather's terrible. Even if the union isn't making any headway.

It's only when their sanctuary is revealed as false, when New Caprica becomes a new hell, that Galen loses any reason to smile.

**04**

It's been months since New Caprica and Galen has found reason to smile again.

He doesn't know how, when or even why it begins. Why he walks away from the algae harvesting operation on the aptly-dubbed "algae planet." While it's clear that the powers that be don't have an artistic bone in their body (seriously, it's even less original than "New Caprica"), it's also clear that the Thirteenth Tribe were willing to devote themselves to the concept. He gathered that this was in the case with the Tomb of Athena, but unlike on Kobol, he's experiencing it himself. Alone. Caught up in its divinity...its beauty...its familiarity...And while being ordered to destroy it doesn't bring a smile to his face, nor his failure to, that it points to the next marker on the road to Earth is another matter entirely.

Galen finds more reasons to smile after this. Even after work keeps him away from Cally, even after a case where work keeps them together in a malfunctioning airlock that leads to below-zero temperatures and vacuum exposure. Like the algae planet, like New Caprica, it's a hurdle they've overcome-together. And he finds reason to smile again as the Colonial Workers Alliance is reformed, with him at its head again. To ensure that the society that reaches Earth, a day he feels isn't far from now, will be a society worthy of salvation.

It's when he hears the music...so familiar...that he stops smiling. When he learns that he and three others in this fleet aren't of this society at all.

Discovering that you're a cylon and that your entire life's a lie doesn't give you much reason to smile.

**05**

"Good luck. For what it's worth, if what happened to Cally had happened to Ellen, I would have done the same frakking thing."

Galen smiles at Saul Tigh-superior officer, fellow cylon and now, after all these years, genuine friend. He's tired of people and has reached the stage where them being human or cylon doesn't make a difference. Yet he supposes he'll miss these two...miss everyone. He'll miss his deck crew, he'll miss the union, he'll miss everyone and everything in the ragtag fleet that's kept humanity and himself alive the last four years. But even so, he has to move on. Earth, as people are calling this world, is a new start. And he intends to make the most of it, even if his place of residence will be an island to the west of one of the northern continents.

And thus when he's there, in the highlands, freezing and alone, Galen smiles. Because even after losing everything, even after being fraked over by humans and cylons alike, he smiles anyway. Because he knows he's won. And as he sits here, remembering flashes of a life on the real Earth, as he accepts who and what he is, he shows it...

_There must be someway out of here,_

_Said the joker to the thief..._

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_A/N_

_Tyrol's chapter was probably the hardest to write. In regards to the chapters that came before, it was easy enough to pin Ellen's moments in regards to Saul, which matches her character development over the series. Anders was also fairly easy to write, as I feel he developed as a character as well, or at least went through key stages in regards to his status (pyramid player to Resistance leader, pilot to hybrid). Tyrol though...well, suffice to say, I think "God" has it in for him, for lack of a better term. After all the crap he goes through, it's perhaps no surprise that he decides to live alone in Scotland._

_Don't worry though-we all know the truth that he wrote _All Along the Watchtower _first. ;)_


	4. Tory Foster

**Battlestar Galactica: Final Five**

**The Fourth: Tory Foster**

**01**

Tory smiles when she's first brought in as President Roslin's aide, to replace the much mourned and much missed Billy Keikeya. She keeps smiling even as she hears the sentiment repeated over and over-as good as she is, as good as she can ever be, "she's no Billy." Apparently experience with a school's debate team outweighs experience gained from being a precinct captain for the Federalist Party in Delphi for five years. But with fewer than 50,000 humans remaining in this universe by this point, she supposes that the Roslin Administration has to take what they can...bar Tom Zarek of course.

So Tory keeps smiling. Even if she knows her true potential will never be realized.

**02**

Tory smiles when she realizes her true potential.

It comes as a shock at first, to realize that she's a cylon, that she always has been and always will be. She's unique in some respects it seems, with herself, Tyrol, Anders and Tigh being four of what Baltar refers to as "the Final Five." Yet that uniqueness feels like a vulnerability rather than a strength at first. All cylons can resurrect, but all the cylons encountered so far have been mere copies-identical products. Does that apply to her, being one of a kind? She does not know...but still she smiles. She's unique. The only member of her line, as far as she's aware. She's...special. So are the others. But as they cannot or will not recognize that, she assumes that she's a cut above the rest.

**03**

Tory smiles as she listens to Baltar's words, at first over the radio and then at his very meetings. They reaffirm what she already knows-what she supposes some layer of her consciousness has always known, only let free at the Ionian Nebula. People are perfect, all created in God's image. A patron deity of both cylon and human. Yet she supposes there are still layers of perfection. Take the human body, with all its vulnerabilities and internal time bombs such as the cancer that has returned to Roslin, and compare it to the perfection that is the body of a cylon. Frak what her 'leader' thinks about her affiliation with Baltar-Tory has put human notions and human mortality behind her.

So Tory smiles. Because she feels free.

**04**

Tory smiles as she speaks to Galen Tyrol in Joe's Bar-a fellow cylon who, for some reason, isn't smiling back at her. It's difficult to understand why-doesn't he understand the liberation involved in their new status? It takes time to get used to, sure, but she would have thought by now that he would have embraced it. Maybe he just needs a nudge...or, rather, a helpful hand...gently squeezing his arm...her fingers running over it. It's strange, but it's as if they've done this before...in another life...regardless, Tory keeps smiling. And it's genuine.

The smile stops the moment that Callandra Tyrol comes barging in, with her son in her arms no less, berating her husband for what she perceives as an affair. Tory realizes two things at this point-the first is that it's _Mrs _Tyrol that's keeping Galen from embracing his true nature. The second is that this isn't likely to change unless drastic action is taken. And as an open wall panel and a trip to the airlock make clear, the time for said action is now.

Tory smiles as she approaches Cally and what she now realizes is a human-cylon hybrid, not unlike Hera Agathon. Or at least she thinks she's smiling as she approaches the waste of flesh and bone before her-it's hard to speak comforting words of trust to a worm that wouldn't know the first thing about such concepts. Or anything about recognizing duplicity for that matter. It is thus a simple matter for Tory to take Nicholas Tyrol in her arms and send the boy's mother out into the vacuum of space where she belongs.

Tory smiles...she's liberated Galen and his son. And it feels good.

**05**

Tory manages not to smile when D'Anna steps off the Raptor.

It seems like a lifetime ago when hatred boiled in her for D'Anna, or any other cylon model on New Caprica for that matter. But now, it's like seeing a long lost sister return from the dead-perhaps literally true considering that the Number Threes were meant to be boxed. Still, she'll learn about such things in time. Time is limited, assuming the Resurrection Hub was destroyed, but as a perfect being, she'll at least be able to appreciate time's flow to a greater extent than as a human.

Tory manages not to smile as D'Anna names her terms, that the Final Five are to be allowed unrestricted access to the baseship, that they will find their own way, that she's in contact with them. More than the humans around her know, Tory thinks to herself. Yet while she manages not to smile at such declarations, she does not manage to show restraint. She steps forward, under the pretence of delivering her former president her medication. D'Anna seems to appreciate the deception. The humans...well, they're no brighter than Galen's former wife.

Tory doesn't smile when she meets Roslin for what she hopes will be the last time. It's so gratifying, to look at the dying eyes of a dying woman die even further as she reveals her true nature. She doesn't smile though, for this gratification is not from joy. Rather, it stems from justice. The natural order. And now, after so long, she's ready to meet it. Meet her brothers and sisters. Twos, Sixes and Eights along with the Three in the basestar's control room, smiling at their long lost sister.

And Tory Foster smiles back.

She has come home.

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_A/N_

_Tory's chapter was the first one I wrote and probably the easiest to write. However, that's due to the fact (or opinion I guess) that she's probably the most underdeveloped character of the Final Five. After all, she was brought in to replace Billy, who was killed off because Paul Campbell pursued outside projects. Even then, while the revelations at the end of season 3 affected all the characters, Tory is the only one completely changed, and is perhaps distinguished as a character as a result (the same could be said for Ellen Tigh I guess in regards to her resurrection, but her character development had already set her on such a path effectively). As such, it was easier to nail down the aspects of this chapter._

_And hey, writing for manipulative, sociopathic SOBs can be fun. ;)_


	5. Saul Tigh

**Battlestar Galactica: Final Five**

**The Fifth: Saul Tigh**

**01**

Saul Tigh smiles at the notion of retirement.

Alright, maybe he's laughing...at something...already the alcohol is getting to him, Ellen isn't making it easy to concentrate and Bill isn't around to snap him to attention (any man who can refuse a lap dance is sure to have that quality). Full time marriage, retiring along with his best (and on some levels, only) friend...life seems good right now, and not only because of the presence of scantily clad women in this Caprica City strip club.

Raw emotion. He likes it from both the setting and his wife.

But as the emotion runs dry, as he finds his life settling into monotony, the smiles stop. Both from himself and Ellen, even though she maintains hers far more often than his. It's only when he follows Bill back into the service that he starts to regain it.

He doesn't notice his wife losing hers altogether.

**02**

Saul smiles at his wife when they're reunited.

He never thought he'd be so happy to see her again. Not after the promiscuity, not after the years of sporadic contact and _certainly _not after his depression reached the stage where he burnt a hole in her picture. But then again, he never thought the Twelve Colonies would be subjected to a nuclear holocaust. He never thought he'd find himself starting to win the fight against his alcoholism, regaining his bearings as _Galactica_'s XO. And he certainly never thought he'd be reunited with Ellen in such a manner, and be so..._grateful _to see her. It's like...like the years of them drifting apart never happened. And with civilization having been reduced to ground zero, with the human race forced to start over, maybe it's effectively the case that none of the events of the past occurred.

Yet old habits are hard to break. That's why Ellen flirts with Bill and Lee at the dinner table celebrating her return, twisting the proverbial knife in him all the while. It's why she attempts to exert authority over him when he's left in temporary command of _Galactica_, in light of Boomer turning out to be a cylon agent and trying to do a number on her commander as a result. His own habits are hard to break as well, what with making a bad situation even worse and declaring martial law. Bill recovers soon enough to pick up the pieces and repair the damage, but Saul knows that he was the one who caused the damage in the first place.

But maybe people can change. Maybe that's why, even after trying to sabotage Baltar's election campaign, that he ends up on the planet he tried to avoid. Why it's not so much a case of giving in to his wife's requests to head planetside, but agreeing with her, even smiling faintly at the prospect of getting off _Galactica _for a bit...only for the cylons to show up in force and take a lot more from him than just his freedom.

But even as the leader of the Resistance, even as he compromises the values that separate humans from cylons, he maintains the ability to smile. Even without his eye, without his health, sometimes even without hope, he's able to keep his spirits up.

Or at least he can until Ellen betrays them...leading him to do something that he feels will never allow him to smile again.

**03**

Saul smiles at the prospect of Baltar getting what he deserves.

It's about the only thing that keeps him going, of getting vengeance against the man who let the cylons waltz onto New Caprica without a word of protest, who didn't even lift a finger to help his own people. He's recovered in slow steps after New Caprica...after Ellen...but the prospect of seeing the traitorous frakwhit being flushed out an airlock is the largest one so far.

But then it starts going wrong. The trial...the music...it makes Saul start taking steps in the opposite direction. Small ones at first...but as he starts taking more steps involuntarily, his feet leading him to the ship's gym, to his fellow cylons...

Saul feels that he won't ever be able to take another step again.

**04**

Saul smiles as he sees his son on the sonogram.

It's not just to himself, but to Caprica as well. It's hard describing how he feels about all this-impregnating a cylon (as revealed not too long ago, a _fellow _cylon), that this type of impregnation has never occurred before, that he's the father of the "saviour of the cylon race." Still, one step at a time, at a pace more natural than the speed at which he walked to the catalyst for discovering his true nature. A nature that led him to seek out Caprica, to see past her similar visage to Ellen and...well, finding all kinds of uses for her cell's 'furniture.' So yes, right now, Saul has plenty to smile about.

At least until Ellen shows up. Because while that's more of enough reason to smile, and to put his...experience with Caprica to good use in regards to deciding between the floor or table. But none of that experience has preferred him for having to decide between two women he's come to love...and for one of those two to lose a child that he's come to love also. And it's at this point, that again, Saul finds all reason to smile as non-existent as his unborn son.

But somehow, Ellen's presence makes things better...

**05**

He's with Ellen on Earth...and it's home.

Not the home that was _Galactica_. Not the home that was the Twelve Colonies. Not even her original home of Earth-the real Earth, the one that even two-thousand years after he left it, is still an irradiated wasteland. No, she's on the new Earth that the old Earth once was...what Kobol was...heck, even what the Twelve Colonies were. And yet it's something else. Something new. Something...innocent. Something that he hopes will stop the cycle of destruction from ever repeating itself. Because it's clear to him that the two forms of intelligence in this universe, human and cylon, have to band together if there's to be a future and finally, it's happened.

Then again, cylonxcylon couples are still possible, as his wife's presence demonstrates.

Saul sees much right now, looking across the savannah of the continent that the remnants of two peoples have called home. But he only _truly _sees Ellen, standing beside him, and not only because of his single remaining eye. Together with her for the rest of their lives, as was once the apparent case on a sleazy bar in Caprica City all those years ago. Yet now, on this new world, she knows that this will indeed be the case.

So Saul smiles as she and Ellen enter their first embrace on this world.

It's all he needs.

* * *

_A/N_

_Saul Tigh was another challenging chapter to write, and I wasn't sure how to go about it at first. I knew I could either make it based around his relationship with Ellen, or make it more independent (e.g. his first meeting with Jack Fisk was a moment I considered showing). However, I eventually settled on the first option, as I knew that the last moment would have to be in Africa, and it was a way of making things come full circle. The actual order of chapters was based on the order of discovery (Ellen first, then the order in which the others arrive in the ship's gym), but I found putting the two Tighs as first and last worked out in other ways as well._

_Least that's my opinion at least. Could be I've written an aberration of a chapter. 0_0_

_Anyway, I don't have any other _Battlestar Galactica _fics on my 'to write' list at this point in time. By way of shameless plugging, I'm currently focussing on a _Sonic the Hedgehog _story titled _Mystic Isle_. Go figure._


End file.
